Help! I Need Ideas…

angela-liguori21

Are you the proud owner of a glue gun? Watch Martha Stewart shamelessly? Read every decorating blog before you can function in the morning? I need your help!

I’m working on a magazine piece for which I need to come up with 50(!) creative, unique, and  inspiring home decor tips that can be executed for $100 or less, in the living room, bedroom, or bathroom.

I’ve hit up every design professional I know in Boston. Now I am asking you! Email me or post a comment with your fab’n’fresh ideas. I know you have some.

play-house-paint-lThanks,xom

Design Diary: Michelle Gubitosa of Phi Design

The newest issue of Stuff Magazine came out today, with “A Sleek City Deck Makes for Cool Summer Entertaining.” – the profile I did about an amazing roof deck (and view) in Dorchester. Although I had to drive out of the city, the interview was lots of fun. The place , a classic triple decker – they’re on the top floor – is owned by Michelle Gubitosa (left), co-owner of Phi Design (a creative consulting firm that uses innovative ideas to transform events, interiors, and people) and her wife, Rebecca Wilson (right), owner of The Urban Hound. Michelle made me a yummy lunch (so nice!) and we chatted about pretty much everything, from how they met (at a party on a roof deck), their recent wedding at Mistral (it was a surprise – none of the guests knew!) and Michelle’s impending 50th birthday party (she’s already booked the D.J.), to their favorite booze (St. Germain, Champagne, and Limona Coronas), Michelle’s hidden cooking talents (pizza from scratch, learned from her dad), and Rebecca’s favorite cookbook (The Moosewood).

Here are some photos of their roof deck and rooms:

deck

Michelle and Becky used to live in the South End, where they also had a roof deck that was all “Mac Daddy’d out.” Friends dubbed it the Starlight Lounge and the name stuck. This deck too, is party central. Check out the grill . . .
grill

They might do fish tacos and Limona Coronas (Corona with white rum), burgers and Champagne (Michelle adores Champagne. She used to be a “Veuve queen” but at “forty bucks a pop”, has taken a liking to Prosecco), or tuna steaks and fillets with cocktails. If the ladies who own Brix Wine Shop visit, Manhattans are the drink of choice. Their friend Xyomie, whose brother used to spin at Studio 54, mixes CDs for the fiestas, though Xyomie is actually a chef and sommelier by trade.

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You can see the city, the harbor, and the beloved Boston landmark, the Dorchester gas tank. Fun! gas

Now step inside . . .

lrThis is the living room. Michelle did the interiors throughout. The place was gutted when they bought it three years ago. These days she’s deriving inspiration from Furniture and Interior Design for the 21st Century. There’s a million yellow stickies in her copy marking ideas she wants to incorporate into the events she designs. (By the way, fashion fans, her partner in Phi Design is Nilda Martin, co-owner of Parlor in the South End. Michelle says, “We’re a hybrid; we handle anything creative.”)

kitchenYou can see all the yummy food Michelle put out for me. (Thank you again for feeding me lunch Michelle.) The island counter top is Silestone and the glossy white cabinets are IKEA. (Amazing how great IKEA cabinetry looks these days; I’m seeing it everywhere.) There’s a Jenn Air double oven and two wine cellars. One for, you guessed it, Champagne, and the other for red wine. In winter Becky, who’s the cook of the pair, prepares lots of soups – lentil, stews, Asian noodle that takes all day, beef bourguignon. Michelle, who comes from “a family of builders,” just put up bookshelves for all of Becky’s cookbooks. She even made her a cookbook with all their favorite recipes. So sweet!

drThe dining room. Table, chairs, and mirrors from Crate & Barrel. Alessi bowl on the table, but you knew that already. The black glass chandelier is from one of Michelle’s prop resources, Gallery 484. Notice the photos; they’re Michelle’s. She was a student at the SMFA before going into business as a party planner way back when. These are close up images of crosses on graveyard headstones. Other works of hers are scattered around the house, including super closeups of the backs of lichen-covered headstones, and the floor of Barneys in NYC on which interesting shadows were cast from the racks of clothing. Michelle’s first show opens tonight, May 6th at Enoteca of Via Matta in Park Plaza, Boston.

brThe bedroom. Artwork by Michelle.

On the color scheme she says, “We’re such earth tone people.”

dressing

The dressing room/bathroom opens right off the bedroom, no door. It’s a fab space. This is where the idea for Phi Design was born. Michelle had hired Nilda to prune her closets, and over a glass (or two) of wine, they realized they’d make the perfect creative team.

And, finally, the tub.

tub

The End.

dogWoof.

ARTmonday: Caroline Moore

I happened upon these photos on Etsy by Caroline Moore (aka “sixhours”) last week when I was browsing for child-appropriate pieces I could buy as baby gifts. Obviously, these don’t fall into that category. However, they caught my eye because they remind me of a short story by A.M. Homes in The Safety of Objects. In the story, if I remember correctly, a teenage boy dismembers his sister’s Barbies and does bizarre (sexual) things with them.

I read it over 10 years ago, after reading The End of Alice for a book club and becoming obsessed. (I loved it…. especially because the pearl-wearing girls who comprised the club were appalled by it. It’s narrated by a pedophile in jail, and also involves a young girl experimenting with the boy she babysits.) If you are not familiar with her work, she is an excellent writer, never dull, and often compellingly offensive.

I wonder if the photographer is familiar with the story?

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etsy-sprouts

etsy-seedlings

etsy-peel

Escapes: Post Ranch Inn, Big Sur

I learned about the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, a heavenly spot on the edge of the earth (or at least the West Coast) from interior designer, Robin Pelissier, who owns a design business and little shop called Robin’s Nest in downtown Hingham, Mass. I had been soliciting suggestions for romantic honeymoon spots for “The Lovers’ Go-To Guide” in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine’s Valentine Day issue. While Big Sur had always connoted the great outdoors to me (i.e., hiking, bird watching, etc.), I was never much interested. But this is a spa, and an altogether different story.

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pacific_suitePacific Suite
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cliff_houseCliff House

cliff_house-2Cliff House

butterflyroomButterfly Room

treehouseTreehouse

jade-pooolJade Pool

meditation-poolMeditation Pool

Design Diary: Chef Lydia Shire’s Kitchen Collections

pantryPhoto courtesy of Boston Globe.

Earlier this year I visited chef Lydia Shire at her home in Weston, Mass., to write a story about her kitchen, and more importantly, her overflowing collections of kitchen paraphernalia. The piece “A Cook’s Collection” was published last weekend in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. (If you’re not acquainted, Lydia owns the restaurants Scampo and Locke-Ober in Boston and Blue Sky in York, Maine.) She’s a colorful character, as her home attests…

Outside, the house is a quietly pretty, traditional New England clapboard colonial/farmhouse. As you can see, it was a snowy day when I visited. Unfortunately, Lydia was dealing with some type of flooding that occurred the night before; there were all sorts of workmen there. (Hence, the Chevy pickup.)

exterior

Inside, it’s bright, cheerful, loud, decked out in an abundance of color and kitsch. The photos I shot of her living room are too blurry to post, but here’s a great one of her fantastic dining room.

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The kitchen is amazing. It’s at the back of the house. The entire back wall is glass, with red steel windows, and a door that opens to the patio and field. (The property was a farm way back.) Lydia’s daughter, Lisa Shire, designed the renovations it as her first project out of architecture school, after everyone Lydia brought to see the house told her not to buy it because it was too run down. I wish I had a better photo, but this will have to do. Just be sure to imagine that the window frames are bright red, as is the Venetian glass chandelier. The table, which she got at Brimfield, has a copper top.

table

The floor is concrete. Here’s the story Lydia told me about how it came to be:

“I saved money to do the house over. I had X dollars, and you usually go over and scramble at the end. I didn’t know what kind of floor I wanted here; the rest of the house has quarter sawn oak. I started looking at limestone and other stones, but they were all so expensive would have sent my budget reeling. I had gone to this restaurant in Seattle that had colored, poured concrete floors, so I suggested it to my contractor. We did this for $3,000. It’s poured, polished concrete, with no color, because I didn’t want it fake. It’s perfect with the fieldstone.”

Here’s a photo that her publicist, the wonderful Jo Swani of the The Moxie Agency, sent me of the patio in summer:

summer-backyard

Here’s the area of the kitchen where the cooking happens. It’s on the smaller side, considering how large the room is, but that’s the way Lydia likes it. She has this to say:

“The great thing is this kitchen could not be better. I love the small workspace. I don’t have gadgets. To me, cooking is a pan, an instrument in your hand, it’s a cutting board, your refrigerator your stove. I don’t know why people make these massive things. For what?”

Her favorite part of the kitchen is the red stove.

red-stove

Here’s Lydia’s stove story:

“It’s Chambers; probably made in the late ’40s, maybe ’48, the year I was born. It’s America’s answer to the Aga stove, though it’s gas. My aunt had one in Newton when I was a little girl growing up. I loved it. It was an old fashioned green. I was in California in ’86; I went to Antique Stove Heaven and I saw this. It was in perfect mint condition, so I bought it for a little over $1,000 and had it shipped to Boston. My meat purveyor stored for it me. I didn’t have a house, no place to put. I finally got it out when I moved in here.”

The stove has a built-in mashed potato cooker, and a broiler that opens from the top of the stove, in which she she cooks chicken legs quite a lot. But her favorite use for the Chambers stove seems to be chocolate cake…

“It makes chocolate cake better than my Gagganeau, which is so well insulated that the heat is very uniform, so it bakes the cake slowly, whereas in this one, the heat is more intense, so the cake gets crusty on the outside and gooey inside. I always make chocolate in my old oven, progress is not always good. I could make the same cake in both ovens and you’d like the one from my red one better.”

Just a few more pics before we get to the collections…

butcher-blockThis is Lydia’s butcher block. It’s old, though the stand is newish. It came from England. She says, “”I’m an incurable carnivore,” she says. “I love to think of all the happy carcasses that met their demise here.”

She’s especially fond of pigs.

pig-out

pigss

Lydia is just as much a collector as she is a chef. She says her husband calls her stuff junk, but actually most of the stuff is pretty special. She stores/displays most of the items in the pantry, a room within her kitchen with walls made from two-ply laminated glass sandwiching a layer of mesh, so they’re sheer but still provide some cover.

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Finally, here is a sampling of her stuff!

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tools-on-copper

coffee-steamer

bride-train

chef
stove-pigs

clown-candy-boxes

jacks
butter-stove

more-stoves
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valuable-plate

childhood